When he needs refuge from his father's beatings, sports fan Ste (Neal) spends the night with his neighbor Jamie (Berry). The boys normally sleep head-to-toe, but one night Jamie convinces Ste to share a pillow with him, thus beginning an affair. The two boys come out of the closet, and though we know they suffer torment in their working-class London neighborhood, filmmaker Macdonald chooses to make Beautiful Thing an uplifting story and keeps the harassment to a minimum. Jamie's hard-working single mother (Henry) assures the boys that there's a place in the Mediterranean where homosexuals can live free of prejudice, and she calls it Lesbian.